TSH, day 2
7:30 am — TSH, day 2
相模湖休養村キャンプ場
The night passed well except that I was woken up several times by the loud sound of chestnuts falling on the roof and once it sounded like a small rockslide nearby.
The early-bird plan worked and I woke up with the sun, at 4am, quite before any alarms. Packing lazily with a quick snack took about an hour and at 5am I was walking. Un?fortunately I missed the right turn and thus skipped mt. Sekirozan by walking a road. It was still nice.
8:00 am — Breakfast
手打そば 与衛門
Two hours later I am sitting at the top of mt. Ishisuna, having my full-fledged breakfast.
9:00 am — High level dungeon
The mountain I’ve just descended from turned out to be a lair of land leeches. They even have a leech repellent to prevent spreading leeches into residential areas. We should add this thing to dungeons&dragons!
I was lucky enough to meet none of them though.
1:30 pm — Crossroad
Ok, I’ll tell you a story — never ever try to do stuff like this.
Most of today I walked the routes of TSH other than what Tom walked. After descending from Ishisuna I walked the northern route which turned out to be an easier over-the-road way. Yeah! A recreational day of roads, I’d like to say… Around 12.30 I stumbled into a choice: to walk left and get directly to the planned mountain hut (4.5 km, ~800m ascent) or to walk right and get ahead of time to a hut somewhat further on the trail (~11 km, ~500m ascent). Guess what I’ve chosen… Don’t get me wrong, the plan was not bad. It is just that I turned out to be freaking awesome /actually more freaky than awesome/.
Well, to be honest it was a difficult decision that took about /0.75l of sweet drinks, hurray to vending machines/ 30 minutes to decide. The final drop was the idea that this way I can skip one camping accommodation and one short day and move directly to the next mountain hut. One walking day saved for later.
P.S. Note that since I’m doing delayed post writing/editing the photos attached might not be in chronological order and some of them might be taken after the actual post was written.
5:30 pm — Pathfinding
It was in the air. Near my spontaneous lodging there were “12 hours adventure running” conducted. 11 hours and 30 minutes after I started to walk I was less than 500 meters away from the hut. And there I met something that looked like a landslide on a clay slope. According to gps, Tom went straight through the thing and I do remember he wrote something like that. Yet I was not certain and to be honest I doubted a bit my legs. Especially since the running trail turned the opposite direction and on the map there was an alternative way to get up the mountain there. So I turned and walked a few hundred meters away from the hut just to realize that there was no alternative route. Maps.me showed the way up stated right where in reality there was a 3 meters high stone wall. And googlemaps stated that there was no way at all to begin with. After I /almost/ despaired and /almost/ decided to go back I suddenly saw: see the picture.
A marked path! Hurray!
I went there… To be honest, now, on top I think it would be better to follow Tom’s gps and go straight. The detour added more than a kilometer of additional distance and more than 50 meter of additional ascent and (!) descent. And at some points it, covered with fallen leaves and with little to no visible markers, looked as bad as that landslide.
Still, the view at the top was gorgeous.
8:00 pm — Wrapping the day
It was a really hard 12+ hours hiking day. Lessons learnt.
I like starting early. The air is fresh and cool, the roads are empty, the shops are closed… Oops, that was a bad one. Starting early, unless it is a 24/7 convenience store, I should not rely on the nearby shops. I’d say on weekends some of them open after 11am, and some of them do not open at all. Vending machines with drinks are 24/7 though and it is really a bliss.
It is good to have some water saved till the camp. This hut has no water sources and since I do have enough water for evening and morning food it is fine. Same with the food. So far I’m trying to keep enough food to last till the end of the current day and a half of the next. Instant noodles are way better than in Ukraine and are good for mornings and evenings. Rice balls are great and work nice for a midday and snacks on the way. Space food jellies rule even though they are heavy. Some sweets are a must have though there aren’t a lot of sweets here.
Vending machines. As soon as you see a vending machine, buy something. If you already have enough liquids in your backpack, just buy and drink it. It is good to make a 5-minutes-stop to give a rest to your legs and drink a can of something sweet. Yep, prefer sweet drinks unless you want to use it for instant noodles or heat up as a tea. Sports drinks are great. Vitaminized drinks are nice.
Plans. Plans are good. Especially carefully calculated ones. Do not change them just ‘cause you think you can walk twice as far today. I will not follow this one.
Right now it is already dark, I am full, tired and ready to go to sleep. Alarm is set early.
And as a reward to both me and you I’m spending a little extra charge and internet to upload the past two days. Well, I wanted to, yet there is no cellular service here. See you later!
